"Never mind the church now," said I. "Can you, or can you not, tell me what I want to know?"
"Everything, from beginning to end--absolutely everything. Why, I answered the gate-bell--I always answer the gate-bell here," said the Capuchin.
"What, in Heaven's name, has the gate-bell to do with the unburied corpse in your house?"
"Listen, son of mine, and you shall know. Some time ago--some months--ah! me, I'm old; I've lost my memory; I don't know how many months--ah! miserable me, what a very old, old monk I am!" Here he comforted himself with another pinch of snuff.
"Never mind the exact time," said I. "I don't care about that."
"Good," said the Capuchin. "Now I can go on. Well, let us say it is some months ago--we in this convent are all at breakfast--wretched, wretched breakfasts, son of mine, in this convent!--we are at breakfast, and we hear bang! bang! twice over. 'Guns,' says I. 'What are they shooting for?' says Brother Jeremy. 'Game,' says Brother Vincent. 'Aha! game,' says Brother Jeremy. 'If I hear more, I shall send out and discover what it means,' says the father superior. We hear no more, and we go on with our wretched breakfasts."
"Where did the report of firearms come from?" I inquired.
"From down below--beyond the big trees at the back of the convent, where there's some clear ground--nice ground, if it wasn't for the pools and puddles. But, ah! misery, how damp we are in these parts! how very, very damp!"
"Well, what happened after the report of firearms?"
"You shall hear. We are still at breakfast, all silent--for what have we to talk about here? What have we but our devotions, our kitchen-garden, and our wretched, wretched bits of breakfasts and dinners? I say we are all silent, when there comes suddenly such a ring at the bell as never was heard before--a very devil of a ring--a ring that caught us all with our bits--our wretched, wretched bits!--in our mouths, and stopped us before we could swallow them. 'Go, brother of mine,' says the father superior to me, 'go; it is your duty--go to the gate.' I am brave--a very lion of a Capuchin. I slip out on tiptoe--I wait--I listen--I pull back our little shutter in the gate--I wait, I listen again--I peep through the hole--nothing, absolutely nothing that I can see. I am brave--I am not to be daunted. What do I do next? I open the gate. Ah! sacred Mother of Heaven, what do I behold lying all along our threshold? A man--dead!--a big man; bigger than you, bigger than me, bigger than anybody in this convent--buttoned up tight in a fine coat, with black eyes, staring, staring up at the sky, and blood soaking through and through the front of his shirt. What do I do? I scream once--I scream twice--and run back to the father superior!"